


Ursa Major

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 11:58:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Escape from France proves a harrowing ordeal for Jack as it reveals Stephen’s mettle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ursa Major

**Tuesday**

**17 May 1803**

Just outside of Toulon, six and eight tenths miles to the northwest, near Le Broussan, Stephen Maturin found the red farmhouse with a bright blue shed behind it just where he had been directed to go. He and Jack Aubrey went into the shed and there found the lit dark lantern and several very large sacks waiting for them. It was still dark outside but the dark lantern gave off a dim light in the shed and Stephen found a large pack to be worn on a man's back put there for them as well. Stephen opened everything and examined the contents, pleased. The goods were just as had been described and most importantly, Jack’s disguise that would see him out of France was there, exactly as promised by his contact, despite the difficulty and the exigence.

“Here we are, my dear, just as I had hoped. It should do quite well. Let us see how it fits then.”

Jack Aubrey looked down at the massive bear skin and head before him and laughed aloud. “What a fellow you are to be sure, Dr Humourous Droll! Ha,ha,ha!” Stephen Maturin’s face was dead serious.

“Jack, the Dear knows I make no jest. This is your disguise. This is the way that you will be able to walk out of France a free man. It is this or a long march to Bitche.”

“Are you actually in earnest? You astonish me. It is scarcely creditable,” Jack said, picking the head up and examining it critically. It was massive, a triumph of the taxidermist's art, a very large bear that had been unstuffed and dismounted from its display, the head removed from the very large glass globe that had held it up and given it shape. The face was set in an expression of a sort of dull stupor, amazingly lifelike, but not the usual trophy of snarling menace.

“Jack, listen quickly and well, will you? Your presence is known in Toulon. We have been remarked upon. Buonaparte’s intelligence network is far more vast and efficient than one would ever guess from what we have seen. Your service record is very well known here, you are considered by the French, if not the Royal Navy, to be an extremely valuable British asset. Yes, Christy-Pallière is a friend and would not ever give us away, I believe, but your presence is known here and there is a price upon your head. So I was informed by a Royalist friend on good authority. This sad, poor ruse, as crude and ill-conceived as it appears to be, may be the only opportunity we may have to leave France. You must put this on and wear it until we get to Spain. Furthermore, you absolutely cannot speak whatever unless I tell you that it is safe. I am so very sorry, Jack, but there is no other way. Now undress quickly.” Jack looked into Stephen's grave face.

“How long will it take us to get there?” Jack said, loosening his neckcloth and placing it in the sack Stephen had given him and unbuttoning his shirt.

“That all depends. I should say at least a month, perhaps more, as we shall not take the main roads, it is simply too dangerous.”

“And you?”

“I have everything I need for my disguise, joy. Never vex yourself for me.”

 

The problems with the bear skin became evident to Jack extremely quickly. The body portion had to be gummed and plastered in various places to his naked body. Stephen had to sew him into the skin, closing the pelt at the neck for him to wear it and then the stitches had to be cut apart for him to be quit of it, and so he was able to remove only the head daily, except on the very rare occasion they spent two days at the house of a sure friend of Stephen's. It had been an exceptionally warm spring in the south of France with temperatures over eighty-five degrees during the day and the bear skin was extremely hot; there was very little air exchange in the head. It was heavy. They had to stop and rest frequently and Jack’s feet, plastered into the bear's rear paws, very quickly became so blistered and lacerated that it was painful to walk and he lumbered even more slowly, making his gait convincingly ursine as he stooped forward in pain, the tender soles of his feet screaming in protest. He could not use his hands in any manner, his fingertips fit in the bear's paws but he could only clumsily swipe with the long, sharp claws.

Opportunities to eat or drink were few and far between and to make water, he ended up being forced to urinate on himself and so he held his bladder until he could no longer stand to do so. He was extremely thirsty but could drink very little most of the time. He had two meals a day in the dark, one right before falling asleep in whatever remote place Stephen found for them and one immediately upon awakening.

He could not, of course, speak if anyone might actually see him, for they would be given away immediately. He could speak only in darkness or when Stephen told him it was safe. Out of doors, far from the occasional inn or Stephen's sure friends, then it was only when they made their bed, such as it was, Jack lying miserably on the hard ground that Stephen attempted to soften by constructing a resting place for him of dry pine needles that they could they speak freely and then Stephen would lie next to Jack with his face touching the bear's head and they would speak very softly as Stephen's incredibly sharp senses remained attuned for any sound or movement. One night, Stephen stopped speaking and they lay there in silence for ten minutes until a juvenile wild boar came up and stared at them lying on the ground, well outside of Carcasonne. Stephen spoke sternly to it in French. Its body shuddered and it ran off.

"What is it?" Jack whispered, his heart pounding. Stephen squeezed his shoulder hard, reassuringly.

"It was a boar, less than a year old. It is gone now."

"What did you say to it?" Jack said.

"I said, "Be off, Brother Boar, you are amongst friends now but the hunter comes who will prize your morel-flavoured flesh," Stephen said.

 

The inability to speak most of the day, to have any kind of conversation unless prompted by Stephen weighed heavily upon him as he walked in increasing pain and complete silence, immersed in his own thoughts more than twelve hours per day. He could barely see anything with the head placed over his own. Stephen’s hands became the only actual external reality he perceived, taking him, pulling him, leading him. “His hands are so smallish compared to mine, how can they be so very strong?” he marvelled as Stephen pulled him up from the ground for them to start walking for what seemed the thousandth time. Stephen’s hands were the only ongoing human contact he was to have throughout those long, long days and he came to yearn to feel that warm, dry reassuring hand on his person, that break from unremitting solitude. It amazed him how much Stephen's hand could convey -- _halt, be very silent, hurry, be patient now, just a moment, caution, make way, calm yourself, Jack, all is well._ Never had he imagined that Stephen could say all of that without uttering a word or giving him a glance. Now bedding outside, he could not fall asleep unless Stephen was touching him, for now that they were approaching the border, he was forced to wear the bear's head better than twenty-two hours a day, rushing to eat as much as he could in the dark to reduce the chances of being seen with the head off. He had to spend the time without the head on eating, not speaking. The suit had become a prison of sorts, a vile prison he loathed but paradoxically, his only chance for freedom. He itched and could not scratch, which in itself was maddening.

The penultimate night before they finally arrived in Spain, Jack woke in the middle of the night, bellowing in pain, disoriented and panicked, having no idea where Stephen was. The air was very dry in the mountains and he was extremely dehydrated. Within seconds, Stephen was lying across his shoulders, his mouth near where Jack’s ear should be, his hand reaching into the bear skin at the head to make contact with Jack’s skin.

“Shhh, soul, shhh, I am here, I am right here. I am right here. Are you in pain?” Jack could not stop himself and he wept from a plethora of intense pains and pure exhaustion as Stephen’s hand slipped up inside the head and stroked his neck below his ear. “Almost there, brother, we are almost there, one day more at very most, God between us and evil, one more day, soul...” Stephen repeated over and over again as there was nothing else he could say by way of comfort, knowing that Jack was in very sorry shape, given he had suffered so many wounds at sea and had never shed tears from physical pain that Dr Maturin had ever seen, only from sorrow. Stephen's hand remained at Jack's neck for the rest of the night.

 

Finally, they were in Stephen's castle in Catalunya, in Roselló. Stephen called for the water to be heated, the bath to be drawn and started examining Jack from head to toe, using a pair of tweezers to pull the ticks embedded in him out of his flesh. He called Josefina to bring the largest pitcher full of water and urged Jack to drink, taking his pulse as they waited for the water to heat. Then he gave him the chamber pot and watched as Jack urinated, looking with deep disquiet at the bright red blood in Jack’s urine and the pain in his face. The chronic dehydration, the profuse perspiration, the extreme exertion and the stress of the heat had most certainly resulted in kidney stones, always a risk in cases of prolonged, chronic dehydration in those of a sanguine nature, Stephen thought. Continuously pushed fluids and bleeding would have to undertaken, as well as a course of appropriate physic. Most important was drinking copious amounts of the softest water.

Jack had been bathed and put to bed when his fever had soared, all of which Stephen had expected. What happened next, he did not, as Jack moaned and screamed and started scratching himself violently. Stephen raised the nightshirt and held up the candle, looking at the tell tale rash that covered his hands, arms, legs, belly and back. He retrieved a magnifying glass to better assess the rash and then stepped out of the room and called for Josefina who was up shortly.

"Bring me the ink bottle and the bottle of spirits of wine and clean towels," Stephen said. She did so. He took Jack's arm and placed a drop of ink on the rash, spread it across his skin with the handle of his lancet and then wet the towel with the wine and wiped the residue of the ink off the skin. A very fine trail of ink was left, a minute line indicating a burrow within Jack's skin. Stephen examined him with the magnifying glass after giving the towel to Josefina.

"Oh, Mother of God. Call Pau. He must go to the village and fetch Jordi, Bartomeo and Eulalia if possible. The Captain is very, very ill. Have we many _crisantems perses_ here?"

" _Sí, el meu senyor_ , for the sheep, for the dip."

"Tell Pau to first bring as much of them as he might to the kitchen and _àrnica_ and _calèndula_ as well. Have la Vella Caterina heat the small copper cauldron with fresh rain water, if you please, from the small barrel. I need Bartomeo to go to the closest apothecary with my list. Jordi may ride with a message for Don Ramon in Ullastret and then on to Barcelona. If Eulalia might come to assist me during the day, I should appreciate it greatly. Now, pray help me, dear Josefina to get this draught into him and then with the blessing, we must put some mittens on him and make them fast or he shall do himself serious harm."

" _Sí, Don Esteven."_

Twice a day, he bathed Jack in the marble bath with first very hot water and then a cool bath and then dried him and covered him entirely from head to foot with the lotion that the cook, old Caterina had made to his specifications, drugging Jack with laudanum to near unconsciousness to stop his scratching and biting as he chewed at his hands in his sleep, the itch driving him mad in his delirium. It also dulled the pain of the kidney stones being passed. Stephen sponged the worst of the rash throughout the day and struggled to get him into a very hot bath in the early afternoon to stop the itching for a few hours so he could feed Jack when the laudanum wore off each afternoon.

Jack finally awoke as from a nightmare and opened his eyes to see Stephen's back to him. He could barely speak and croaked, "Where are we?" Stephen came and felt his head. His fever was gone.

"I give you joy of your recovery." Stephen said. "God be praised." He silently said a prayer of thanks to the Blessed Mother and came to the bedside and poured a glass of cold water for Jack, who emptied it immediately.

"What happened? Last I recall, we was walking, almost here."

"So we were.That was almost two weeks ago. You have been very, very ill, my poor Jack."

"What is this?" Jack said, looking at his covered hands and the bandages on his person.

"You had sarcoptic mites," Stephen said, rubbing his eyes. "Mites on top of two other serious illnesses. I thought you would chew your hands down to the bones. I must examine you more later. I shall call Josefina for some supper for you."

"I am not hungry."

"I am afraid I must insist," Stephen said. "Are you itching at all?" He sat next to Jack on the bed, pulled the bed clothes aside and raised Jack's nightshirt, looking at where the worst patches of the rash had been. Jack would have scars from scratching himself bloody and the subsequent infection. The wounds were now healing and no longer bright red.

"No, not at all. How did you cure me?"

" _Tanacetum coccineum_ , Persian chrysanthemums. You are fortunate, there was so much here for the sheep."

"What is it?"

"My godfather taught me how to use the flowers to kill mites on the sheep. I made a lotion for you with it and _calèndula_ and _àrnica_ as well. That and frequent bathing, my dear. Very hot water to reduce the itching."

"We are in Spain?"

"Yes, this is my patrimony, such as it is, given from my mother's family." Jack attempted to sit up and collapsed. "You are very weak. My God, what an ordeal you have endured," Stephen said, putting his arm under Jack's shoulders and helping him to raise himself on the pillows.

“I have no memory of it. Are we truly safe now?”

“Absolutely,” Stephen said, looking into his face. “My poor Jack, in two months, you have lost far more weight than a man should lose in one year.” Jack had lost three stone from their arrival in Toulon.

“Don’t worry for me. I have a way of finding it again in no time, as you have said so yourself, so very frequently," Jack said, laughing and then he looked with his hollow, smarting eyes at Stephen.

"I am afraid I shall be forced to compel you to eat. I have instructed the cook to make all your favourite dishes, inasmuch as we might have them here." Stephen went to the door and called Josefina and directed her to bring them up the supper.

"Stephen, might I have another blanket or two if you please? There seems to be a strong chill in this room," Jack said.

"A chill -- a chill?" Stephen repeated, frowning. He was attired in nothing but a pair of breeches and a shirt and was perspiring in the warmth of the late afternoon. He felt Jack's face again. "My dear, I must examine you now, quickly, I hate to trouble you so." He sat next to Jack and took his pulse. "Have you a headache? Pray do not be stoic in this moment. The time for your stoicism is passed."

"Now that you mention it, old Stephen, I do. My eyes fairly ache as well,." Jack said, blinking, despite the room being dim in the afternoon light.

"Stick out your tongue." Jack did so. Stephen felt his lymph nodes in his neck, raised his arms and felt the nodes in his armpits and then palpated his belly, frowning further at the enlargement of Jack's spleen. "You must be the good patient now, joy, and do exactly as I say, will you, my dear? So much depends upon it. I know your appetite is poor, but you must eat as much as you might to build up your strength," Stephen said, as Josefina came in with a tray. He told her in Catalan to call for Pau to come as soon as possible and to bring blankets as he fed Jack.

Pau came in shortly. He was a small man, smaller than Stephen, but wiry, quick and very strong, nearing age thirty. He was, like Josefina, her husband Marco, the cook called la Vella Caterina and Josefina's daughter, Carlota, a family retainer of the Domanovas. He smiled seeing Jack apparently awake and lucid and made his obeisance to Stephen.

"Have you heard in the village, Pau, is the mountain fever abroad?"

Pau replied that yes, it was, but rumour had it that it was worse on the French side by far, may God protect them, the impious dogs. He adjusted his barretina and looked expectantly at Stephen.

Which type was predominant, Stephen asked him -- was it the jerking eye mountain fever or the other kind? Pau demurred. He could not say, truly but not so many had died as of yet. Only two in their village, but more in France. Stephen thanked him and Pau bowed deeply and kissed his hand as he took his leave.

"Stephen, I had no idea you were such the great man. He called you "Don Esteven," I sorted that much out," Jack said, his teeth chattering.

"Jack, I have an infusion, a decoction for you to drink and I am afraid you must drink it until it is nearly coming out of your ears and it is quite bitter."

"More physic? But why?"

"I do not wish to alarm you but I believe you are developing mountain fever," Stephen said. "The infusion is merely a precaution. The more you drink, the quicker it will pass."

"I will do anything you ask, brother, absolutely anything, save one thing."

"And what would that be?" Stephen said

"I shall never wear that loathsome bear skin ever again," Jack said very seriously but then he laughed even as his head pounded and his teeth chattered. "I ain't worried, Stephen, not in the least."

"Why is that soul?"

"As to that, why, as to that, I am in a castle in Spain being attended by my own personal physician who can raise the dead. Why, the Duke of Clarence ain't in it," Jack said laughing until his laugh turned into a choking cough.

 

Mountain fever it was. Despite the quarts of infusion of Jesuit's bark that Stephen poured into him, Jack contracted a robust case of it. Stephen was relieved that it turned out to be the milder four day type, not the dreaded jerking eye, two day variety, which was usually a death sentence. That said, Jack was so debilitated that it was nonetheless not a certainty that he would have a full recovery without the most assiduous care. He would seem to be getting better for two or three days and then the cycle would start all over again of the headache, the chills, the body aches, the eye pain and then a high fever. Stephen had left off bleeding him after two weeks because Jack was so weak that he would not risk it further.

Jack was down to barely eleven stone when finally, after fourteen weeks, he had gone five days without fever and Stephen allowed himself to hope the tide had finally turned. He was in far better spirits than Stephen had seen him since they had been in Toulon and he had not been actively delirious for an entire week. They had been in Roselló one hundred and thirteen days, the summer was long over. Stephen was heartened to see him eating with relish that morning for the first time since they had arrived, after announcing, "Stephen, I am so hellish peckish that I could eat an ox and call for more."

Stephen left to get a book from what was left of the library and when he came back, Jack was up and perturbed, half dressed with his breeches sliding off his hips.

"Where are my old breeches?"

"Those are your old breeches."

"They look just like them but they ain't. Why, they are falling off of me."

"You have lost a considerable sum. You must take them off. Josefina may take them in for you."

"Stephen, might I have a bath and a shave? Dear Lord, how long has it been since I shaved?" Jack said, feeling his very full beard.

"Fourteen weeks, I believe."

"Fourteen weeks! How long have we been here?"

"Today is the hundred and thirteenth day -- sixteen weeks and a day." Jack was thunderstruck.

"What is to-day's date?"

"It is Wednesday, the nineteenth of October, my dear. We left Toulon twenty-three weeks ago, on the seventeenth of May."

"Truly? I thought we had been here perhaps a month. I had no idea of it. My God." He looked at Stephen, who had gone to the door to call for the bath to be drawn and then gone to the dresser to get fresh linen for him.

More than four months Stephen had been devotedly attending him and had saved his life yet again God only knew how many times. Stephen had used that superlative canniness Jack did not have a name for to do the seemingly impossible over and over and had gotten them out of hostile France. He felt such a flood of sentiment welling up in him that he had to sit down on the bed as he gazed at Stephen.

His heart was so full and he experienced so much in this moment that he would never and could never express in words, for the word "gratitude" was abysmally inadequate. He was filled with a type of awe at his further realisation of Stephen's far beyond extraordinary parts. He was moved to the very depths of his being by Stephen's demonstration of what was evidently the profoundest affection conceivable, so much so that Jack was entirely overwhelmed. The depth of their friendship, the depth of his affection and admiration for Stephen was greater than he had ever experienced for anyone ever in life.

Jack was a man of many friends, more friends than he could ever name.  He was accustomed to trusting his life to his fellows, his crew; he himself had acted quickly to save others' lives and had his own life saved countless times similarly by shipmates over the years and he was no stranger to that reality. This experience of the last twenty-three weeks was so apart from anything he had ever known, so very different and the emotions it engendered in him quite overcame him, the tie that existed between himself and his particular friend and which bound him now so very, very closely to Stephen Maturin.


End file.
